


Letters To The Sky From The Road Beneath It

by orphan_account



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: F/F, Roadtrip, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:07:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25884082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: They did not hate each other, in fact, they did not know each other. They left for different reasons; Becky wanted to see the world and Sasha just wanted the escape. Whoever wrote the manual on soul-searching clearly did not include the possibility of a plus one to that journey
Relationships: Sasha Banks/Becky Lynch | Rebecca Knox
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

**I.**

_My parents drank fury and gin_

_when we lived in places_

_quick-rented, half-furnished_

_with couches and beds that smelled_

_of strangers, the floors scrubbed_

_with regret_

* * *

She emerged out of thin air at lightning speed, which was too fast, even for the dust to settle at the wrinkled gleam of her leather jacket. Becky resigned from work similarly, an undeniably clear and abrupt realization settling in her mind during one dawn that was particularly too early for anyone. The next day, the papers have been filed and she had decided to ride off into the sunset.

Reality hit a little bit magically for Sasha too. It was an afternoon where the day had stretched for a little bit too long, and at the edge past the precipice of alienating exhaustion, she decided that enough was enough. From that minute on she had planned for her eventual escape. Because it was clear that her hard-nosed demands weren’t lauded, tolerated, or entertained. But after all, she couldn’t have expected much from long-socked, buttoned-down stiffs who called themselves students at the boarding school. The authorities haven’t been much different.

They were different people, coming from different parts of the country, having lived different lives. And they left for different reasons; Becky wanted to see the world and Sasha just wanted the escape. 

It was a chance meeting on the corner on the off-road of a gravelly street. Smoke billowed out of the hood of Sasha’s car and came with it all of her hopes of getting out of the town safely, or at all. She had been leaning against the door of her car, her accessorized wrist reflected from the half-folded side mirror. 

_Fuck,_ Sasha wished that she was thinking; after her mind bulldozed through helpful and unhelpful ideas - it had blanked out by the third hour. It was only starting to get dark, but at least it was colder. When the first gust of air blew from the fading sky, it seeped into Sasha’s bones, and the hair that stood from her skin revealed a fact that she didn’t want to consider. She had never much slept in a cushion that wasn’t at least her height and a half tall, but she might have to shrivel up in the car’s backseat, without any form of security other than the lock system of the shitbox that had already proven itself to be faulty.

The tempo’d chatter of breeze in her teeth became overpowered by the boisterous engine of Becky’s Harley-Davidson, flashing a legally blinding light against her eyes and jewelry that shimmered naively. She was delusional enough at the point to have thought that it looked like one of those light at the end of the tunnel clichés.

Becky stopped the motorcycle in front of Sasha’s car, the dirt particles of the road settling as quick as they had erupted from the braking rubber tires, that from afar had just looked like whirling metal. 

“Is everything okay?” Half of her sentence was muffled by the helmet that had been lifted out of her head, revealing thinned out hair that had taken the shape of the safety gear. She spoke to Sasha with a pointed stare, her boot brashly kicking the stand of her motorcycle without looking away. The road, the town was relatively underdeveloped - it wasn’t exactly burgeoning with street lamps and trustworthy officers, and definitely not with kind truckers who would look the other way seeing a woman with a broken car.

Sasha might have initially glared at her, and perhaps it was an involuntary response to speculative hazards. At least she looked like she had a little bit of a fight in her, with the kind of town her car chose to die in. But her face quickly fell in defeat, as the facade broke by the approaching fourth hour. Her arms dramatically explained, “Maybe? I don’t know!?”

“Mind if I take a look at it?” Becky scratched her head, tiptoeing to casually inspect the what little was revealed of the damage in the midst of the dark blue sky. “I might be a bit of help… or not, well it depends.”

It wasn’t an assurance, and it wasn’t enough for Sasha.

* * *

“Yeah well…” Becky murmured, her eyes squinting to the point of closed as it followed the gesture of her own hand-clutched phone, shining spotlights into the engine of Sasha’s car. As she finally closed the hood, she faced Sasha, who at that point had crossed her arms with poorly masked impatience. “It looks pretty bad.” 

If a huff was an answer, it was certainly Sasha’s as her squared shoulders fell. Her mind scrolled through an imagined screen, of contacts and people that could have helped her at that point; to end up with first and last names that she could barely link together. 

“Do you think that uhh, you can contact a mechanic for this?”

Sasha shook her head, her lips sealed tight, so as to not show gritted teeth. “Everyone else lives on the other side of the country. I was just hoping to get to the city and start from there.”

And Becky thought, that maybe when looking back on this particular night, in the future, this time in which she rubbed her hands and asked the gateway question was when she had made Sasha _her_ problem. “How far are you?” 

Sasha chuckled, somewhat aware of the valiant proposition that was about to tug at the stranger’s lips. “Oh, by that I meant, _other_ side. As in, east coast side.”

But even then she could only hope that factory miracles could happen once again, without the wishing wand of her father’s money. So she awkwardly laughed, scratching the back of her head, “Why? Were you planning to take me there.”

“I was,” Becky joked, licking her lips in a you-caught-me fashion. “Then you mentioned the east coast, so now I’m thinking, probably not.” 

“I could be a serial killer.” Sasha smiled proudly, eyebrows raised. 

The shadowed, gold-flecked pupils scanned her up and down, finding that harmless wasn’t exactly the word to describe the stranded lady. No, her eyes were a little bit too distant; sad, even. Too unfocused to have even fathomed anything premeditated. “I think I’ll take my chances.”

“Those luggage? Body bags.” 

“Right,” Becky cleared her throat, a blatant attempt to steer the conversation back to what’s necessary. The skies were getting a little too dark. “The city’s a little far.”

“Wait.” Sasha’s eyes widened. “How far?”

“About… a hundred miles… something?” Her eyes rolled upwards, puffed cheeks blew out, with a tinge of worry and a hell lot of confusion with just how the hell a lady with a car like _that_ full of what looked like hurriedly-packed Louis Vuitton suitcases would end up stranded in a road she did not know, heading towards a city she was unfamiliar with, roaming around a side of the country where _nobody_ probably knew her.

It was a death wish if Becky ever saw one. 

“Look, you can come with me if you want, I’m headed around the same direction. It’s just ahh… I’m definitely in the middle of a trip right now so, if a shitton of stopovers aren’t your thing; I’m also fine with just helping you call the cops or whoever the fuck-”

“No! Not the cops.”

 _Okay…_ A sweat might have trickled from Becky’s temple.

Of course, Sasha had to explain, and as fast as she could, hands flailing all over the place. “No! I meant that… I just, okay, I know what it looks like. It’s _not_ what it is. I just… really, in my experience, I don’t think. It’s just not an institution I feel like I could trust? I mean they’re all always so… yeah, I don’t know how to put it the right way.”

“Huh, okay.” And that was enough, of course.

Sasha slid from where she leaned, like a shadow that had suddenly crept towards the ground, blending with its gravel. Her hands covered her face. She hadn’t anticipated just exactly how exhausted she had been.

“I just want to get home.” A muted scream almost slithered past the palms that covered her face, she rubbed her eyes raw, and her adrenaline was waning.

And maybe it was that childlike frustration that convinced Becky that she was going to take Sasha to the city. _I know, I know..._

* * *

“Have you eaten yet?”

Becky only felt Sasha shake her head from behind her back.

The drive towards the gas station was relatively silent. It seemed as if the last bit of Sasha’s energy had been spent arguing towards being able two take two of five her suitcases instead of just one, and eventually, spent towards deciding which had been the most important bag to bring. True to the type of person that Becky had her pegged as, Sasha pulled out the newest, most expensive-looking one. 

They pulled over to a small diner, and with the little bit of people that ate in there, it felt absolutely overstaffed. Sasha had been too tired, way too tired that her eyes dropped heavy for every time there was dead air - and at that time of the day, dead air was all the air there was. But even then, it had been difficult to hide just how much perplexion and slight disgust she had swallowed as she sat on the timeworn couch opposite of Becky.

“They clean those, you know that right?” Becky looked over Sasha, still slightly amused, but unsure of how she’s going to take the veiled disdain.

Sasha’s face scrunched up into a frown. “You don’t know that.”

“Well it’s not gonna’ kill you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” Becky plainly stated. “We’re sitting here right now, we’re not dead, so… I think I’ll take my chances.”

Sasha sat in silence, still as the condiments that she mentally frowned upon, or as the air that whistled from outside. She disagreed with Becky of course, if there was anything she was taught from the onset: it was things that she ought to fear. From strangers to unclean places and cheap food. Ironic.

Eventually, the waitress came around to take their orders. Sasha had hesitated, and Becky presumed that it could have been in contemplation about which part of the menu would have been the ‘safest’, translating to anything ready-made, factory-hailed, untouched by the diner’s staff.

“I’ll get a soda,” Sasha demurely whispered. The waitress had to lean in to clarify, and after about three tries, she finally understood.

Becky’s eyes just followed the exchange, almost impatient but more observant. She knew the drive ahead though, and she also knew just exactly how hunger looked in a person. So she ordered extra; possibly fries, nothing too meaty.

The food arrived. Becky dug in and Sasha shyly sipped, nothing but utensil noises and erratic slurps between the two of them; all of the observation and questions plainly hidden under quick glances; at Becky’s watch, Sasha’s earring, the kind of fabric Becky’s jacket was made of, and the slightly smudged mascara that ran from Sasha’s lids up until her temples. 

For some reason though, Becky had managed to scarf through her entire plate and Sasha was nowhere near done with the bottle of soda. The plate of fries sat between the two of them as Becky wiped her mouth with a napkin she clumsily plucked from the dispenser. “So do I get a name?”

Sasha’s stomach grumbled.

“Jesus.” Becky muttered to herself, suppressive of the eye roll that merely manifested as a raised brow. “When was the last time that you ate something?”

“...About, eight? I think?”

“AM?”

“No, PM.”

Becky chuckled in disbelief. “Lady. There’s a cat in a box somewhere who may be dead or alive and the only way you’d know is if you open the box. Life’s about takin’ chances. Look, you can do nothing and be scared forever, or take a chance. The worst that can happen will happen anyway if you don’t act somehow.”

Furrowed eyebrows met Becky’s words as Sasha blinked, attempting to process the direction of the conversation. “Sorry… what?”

She sighed. “All I’m sayin’ is, we all die anyway and you’re about to if you don’t eat.”

“Trust me.” 

Sasha glowered at first, of course. Hunger was a familiar word without a feeling that she could have ever connected with - until now. Not when she was an only child who had refused to eat vegetables. Not when her mother’s sharp threat of hunger quickly softens into pampering the minute that Sasha would show the slightest signs of acting out in public. She had lucked out. If there was anything that her parents feared; it was the wildfire of a scandal. 

But she had not known hunger, not until that day; not until she was in the middle of nowhere, forced to think about how stupid her plan had been because of the lack of safety nets. So she plucked a fry from the platter, and the diner sounded of nothing except for her rabbit munches. 

“So…?”

“It’s okay I guess.” Sasha slightly nodded, attempting to forget just how oily the fry had been. “It’s Sasha by the way. I’m Sasha.”

“I’m Becky,” she grinned in success, maybe it had looked a little bit smug, maybe _she_ was feeling a little bit smug or accomplished - Becky wasn’t sure 

_That is lame_. Sasha giggled to herself, wondering just exactly what the other woman had been proud of.

Becky cleared her throat. “So what’s your story? How’d you find yourself in this part of the country?” 

“Soul-searching. Trying one of those New Age trends. You?”

She lied, but Becky took her word for it. It seemed compelling enough to at _least_ be half of the truth. “Same I think. You know just… seeing the world, feeling the air-”

“-feeling the grass, being one with nature, being a tree...” Sasha playfully mocked - possibly out of impulse, which, thankfully just earned her a snort. Although Becky wasn’t sure if Sasha had known that she should _be_ thankful. 

“Christ.” Becky chuckled, motioning for the staff to hand them the bill. 

“Sorry.” _Not sorry._

The bill arrived and Sasha customarily pulled a credit card from her wallet. The card declined and Sasha was completely oblivious to the blanked stare that she got from the staff. The looks between the chef and the waitress and Becky speaking of the words, ‘who’s gonna tell her?’ Because Sasha looked _extremely_ out of place. Everyone just sort of knew.

“I got it, don’t worry.” Becky smiled at the waitress, paying for the entire dinner in cash and casually rising from the couch. “Let’s go.”

And Sasha followed, her pride intact and all that jazz.

* * *

They got separate motel rooms, because thankfully, Sasha was able to contact her bank that her card wasn’t stolen. Sasha had insisted on taking a room that was next to what Becky had already booked in advance. Even though it came to the expense of them having to relocate Becky. She wasn’t complaining though, Sasha had carded the upgrade. She said that it was an advanced ‘thank you’ for carrying her luggage and paying for dinner.

Becky had initially complained, claiming that she had her own luggage, and that if Sasha was fully capable of loading her car; she would be fully capable of taking the bags three floors up. But Sasha tried, and she had been too limp for it. Becky chalked it up to the soda and four pieces of fries.

“You really need to eat something.” Becky breathed through gritted teeth, panting her way up the stairs as she lugged around a total of three suitcases. 

“I’ll get something from the vending machine later.”

“I meant something _real_.”

“Crackers are real.”

“Yeah, really junk.” 

_I know that,_ Sasha retorted, silently, rolling her eyes - accidentally marvelling, if that was the word for it, at the smallness and less-than-impressive wooden and concrete and designless structure of a motel. There were attempts here and there, like the out-of-place pirate wheel that tackily clashed with the front desk’s yellow wallpaper; but nothing that seemed right. 

They finally reached the third floor and Becky was winded. She casually bid Sasha a goodbye/night as she drowsily went to her own room, boots loud against hollow, wooden floors.

* * *

It was past midnight; nothing else but cricket and a drowned white noise from the television. A sharp knock startled Becky awake, her crossed legs jerked involuntarily as if she had just woke up from a dream of falling. 

“Who’s there?” She huskily yelled from her bed. 

There was a beat of silence.

“It’s me.” A small, audible voice was muffled from the other side of the door.

 _Sasha_. She wasn’t sure why none of them had said each other's names upon introduction, but Becky thought about it, in times when her mind wasn’t exactly preoccupied. “Come in!”

“Door’s locked.”

“Oh shit!” Becky facepalmed, tossing her blanket to the side as, hitting the wooden end table upon standing up as she limped her way towards the door and unlocked it.

Sasha immediately blushed as the door revealed Becky who was groaning in pain, wearing nothing but a tanktop and underwear. 

“Come on in,” Becky invited, the wince on her face still palpable when she shut the door.   
“What’s up? Why’re you up?”

“Couldn’t sleep I guess.” Sasha rubbed her arms, awkwardly standing on the corner of the room nearest to the door until Becky motioned for her to sit on the couch that diagonally faced the television. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just stupid.”

A bottle of champagne stood half-empty beside Becky’s bed.

“Celebrating anything?”

“Huh?” Becky followed Sasha’s gaze. “Oh, that! Well, you know… nothing, well in that sense, maybe, everything? You can always find an excuse to celebrate. Do you want some?”

Sasha squinted her eyes, leaning in from the couch to make sense of the label. “Sure.”

They drank quietly for a good while, lazily watching the pictures on the television. It wasn’t particularly interesting, but the inhabited silence was enough.

“I’ve always wanted to see one of those?” Becky’s mind wandered.

“The mountains?”

“No, the zebras.” She took a sip from her glass. “Never got to see one, or visit the zoo when I was younger. You seen em’ yet?”

“Safari,” Sasha distantly said, looking at and past the television. “I was around… ten I think? It was really nice. We were inside this big truck and just drove around the African wilds. I was so tired from the flight then but I think that was the first time I appreciated travelling. There were like, beautiful peacocks and majestically-striped tigers just running so free! I can’t remember a face in that truck who wasn’t amused or happy…”

Sasha paused, hazy, maybe even buzzed. 

“I think… I think that might have been the last time I saw my mother happy.”

Becky had observed Sasha get animated and deflate in the span of a minute. She was distantly perplexed, in fact, a little entranced by the way that the girl had described a presumably bright memory.

The straight line from Becky’s mouth curved into a smile. “I miss my mom too.”

“What happened?”

“Well, there’s not much of a story to it.” Becky scratched the back of her head, downing the rest of her glass as if it had filled up the pool of memories, forcing ones that are so far back surface through buoyancy. “She died when I was around seven. I don’t remember much of her already. All there is are distant memories. Those ones I try to hold on to.”

Sasha pursed her lips, unsure of what else to say but a murmured apology.

And Becky said that it’s okay. 

It was too dark to tell, not even through the gleam of the old television, that tears might have trickled from either of their eyes as the slight sips from their champagne glasses had overtaken the television noise.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

**II.**

_I understood_

_I could fucking see the connections_

_’tween everything and everybody, the_

_four—_

_no, the five-dimensional chessboard_

_we danced on_

* * *

Consciousness arrived early, enough to see the barely-disappeared moon beneath thin cerulean clouds that cast itself over the state like a mesh. The cricket noises had metamorphosed into chirping birds, a signal for every nightmare to hide itself once again and give way to the lively symphony of morning.

“You know, most people just pour the maple syrup over the pancake.” Sasha remarked. She had already given it ten minutes tops; she was done observing the woman in front of her individually dip buttered pancake slices into a sauce cup.

 _Mind your own business,_ Becky almost said. Between the two of them, she was not made for mornings, lest she assumed. “You’re up early. Breakfast person?”

Sasha ate excruciatingly slow. It almost perplexed Becky as a working class nerve deep within her felt slighted until she remembered that they _did_ have all the time in the world. 

“I prefer luncheons, chefs are always in the mood.” 

“Is that so?” _Luncheons?_ Becky chuckled. _Brat._

But of course, Becky didn’t notice the way that her eyebrows had involuntarily shot up. Except that Sasha was Sasha and she spoke in the language of subtext - the art of creating mixed messages from context and body.

Sasha couldn’t stop her own face from shooting daggers at Becky in times where she was busy looking at her food.

_Fucktard._

“So… Do you think you’ll be fine staying here? I might be gone until dark.” 

“What? Why?” Panic flashed in the quiver of Sasha’s lips. “Where are you going?”

“Not sure, might take a hike or drive around.” She leaned back, _actually_ asking herself just what the hell she wanted to prioritize for the day, digging at the back of her head for the mental itinerary she had created for herself. “Shit, I have to drive to the mountains. Yeah… huh.” 

Sasha watched Becky talk to herself. She discovered at that point in time that Becky had a dopey grin that irritated the hell out of her. “You’re going to leave me here?”

“Well I assumed you wouldn’t want to walk that far.”

Sasha hoped that the frustration that clenched her fist did not share the same malice as the way that she bit her lip.

_Fuck. Tard._

* * *

A lot of times, Becky forgets that so many other people do not share her enthusiasm. They stopped by the side of the mountain, provincial smoke blowing a couple of feet beneath them. It wasn’t at the peak, but they had gotten far enough in a sense where if someone screamed from the ground - this was the level at which the voice disappears.

“Wait!” Sasha’s knees collapsed into the ground. “Wait wait wait, hold on just- give me one second.

 _I told you not to come._ Becky spun and slowly walked over to Sasha, the weight of her bag slowly dragging the movement of her feet into a ridiculous lunge. “I _told_ you that 20-minute daily yoga-cardio isn’t going to cut it.”

Sasha’s eyes narrowed at the emphasis. "No you _fucking plebian_ , I sprained my ankle!"

"Damn. Are you always this pissy?" Becky shook her head, but quite honestly unsure if they were both actually going to make it to the peak. There was no way that she was carrying Sasha.

* * *

The sprain was bad of course, Sasha could barely rotate her ankle without alerting the rest of the world with the energetically-charged, high pitched accent that she carried with her. Becky couldn’t remedy it, not with the short arsenal of relief that she carried with her. Which was: stretching the sprain over Sasha's designer sneakers, and convincing Sasha that the painkillers were anti-inflammatory drugs instead of poison.

In the middle of the day, you know, just a couple of minutes before the sun melts into the mountainous horizon. The day had called it a day and so did Becky, as her legs dropped into the surface next to Sasha, leaning into a medium-sized boulder.

“D’ya want some?” The cap of the beer bottle had an extra pop for when Becky used her teeth to remove it, relaxing further into the rock that she and Sasha shared.

“I’m sorry.” Sasha didn’t look at Becky, firmly planted against the side of the road.

Her legs made an effort to support a clumsy way of standing up, as her back tried its hardest not to rearrange as she pushed herself off of the boulder. Becky felt every hair on her forearms stand as the afternoon breeze swept past against her chin. “Do you ever wonder? If people would look?”

Sasha coughed out a nervous cackle from behind Becky. “What do you mean?”

“You know.” Becky kicked a small rock towards the cliff, slowly walking towards the edge to look over where it had fallen. It looked like it just kept on falling. “As in, if you were gone… how would everyone react? The dude that I’d always buy hotdogs from outside the office, or- or my second-degree cousin, or like, my estranged highschool bestfriend. I was thinking, what goes on in their heads when someone just- stops showing up?”

Sasha tilted her head to look over just how dangerously close Becky had been to the cliff. A couple of steps away to be precise. “About the beer…I actually changed my mind, would crack one open for me?”

The sun had already bowed to the dancing trees that stood beneath it, its orange specks all across the skyline like a broken yolk. It was cold. 

“Because I think about them all the time.” Becky staggered a couple of steps closer into the cliff. “It’s _fascinating_ , the different kind of lives that people lead. You could look at a person and put them into boxes but everything’s just so much _more_ than that! I-”

The first time she screamed Becky’s name was when Becky had lowered herself into the edge of the road, her feet dangling against gravity and nothing more. From the fear, perhaps, that it could just be the first time that someone dies in front of her.

“The beer? Please!?” There was never such a spoiled urgency in Sasha’s voice. 

Becky smirked, a brow raised to herself like it had been a nod towards a cosmic joke. “Alright.” 

They stayed there a couple of minutes more, or maybe even an hour more, but they left just a couple of stories before dark. It was funny, to Becky mostly because she discovered that Sasha didn’t find a lot of things funny, that metrics of time disappeared when you were out of the city. For most of it, Becky had blabbered about beer and malt and how everything was calculatingly produced, and how air- oxidation played a factor in its taste. Sasha was mostly nodding, she knew the owner of that beer company, and he wasn’t a particularly nice man. 

“So, how about you? Why did you travel?” Becky asked once again.

“I don’t know,” Sasha said this time. “Maybe like you, to experience, I don’t know… the finer things in life?”

Again, it was a lie and Becky knew it.

“So what do you think of this view?” Becky looked at Sasha, whose eyes were set towards the infinite. 

The question was left unanswered - if words had been the only answer there was to people. But Becky was all aware of it, that people spoke more in the language of what they choose not to say than the things they _do_ say. And she thought that might have been the fundamental source of misunderstanding for most.

Becky chuckled to herself, finally standing up and offering her assistance to Sasha who stood up limping. “You know, whatever it is that’s on your mind, you’re free to say it right?”

 _Freedom’s an illusion that you’re welcome to believe in._ Because she wasn’t - free, and Becky didn’t know it. After lingering evening thoughts for the better part of her life, Sasha had already surmised that no one was truly free. Not the one who owned nothing, with everything to earn; and not the one who owned everything, with nothing else to want.

Feeling like she had been talking to herself, Becky offered up her arm to help Sasha limped all the way towards her motorcycle. “Let’s go back.”

* * *

“You have to let me take a look at it.”Becky was just about to leave Sasha’s room up until the point at which the other woman had tried to limp towards her own bathroom and hissed in pain upon her first step out of the bed.

“I can handle myself.” Sasha’s face contorted in unexpressed pain as she pressed the foot against the floor.

“You’re going to make it worse.” Becky kicked off her shoes outside the door of Sasha’s room and paced towards Sasha, observing the woman’s injury, arms out, ready to assist. “Come on, let me help. What do you need to do?”

“I said I can do it!” The hiss was accompanied by the loud bang of the restroom’s door. 

“Okay…” Becky whispered to herself and paced around the carpeted floor, finally relaxing into the couch just by the desk opposite the bed. 

It took her a while before she realized what it is that she wanted to say. A couple of minutes back Becky couldn’t properly express what about Sasha’s isolation had bothered her. But now, she thought that maybe she could articulate it.

“I…” She searched for the words, and the proper volume just enough to pierce through the door that separated them. “Look, it’s okay to ask for help. It doesn’t change you as a person, it doesn’t make you weaker- or stronger. It just is. No one’s really… you know, born with everything. I think as people, we’re supposed to all complement each other. Like a puzzle, y’know?”

She was rambling. It wasn’t at all how imagined eloquent thoughts pouring out of her mouth. She clasped her shaking hands - observing the little scar that ran in the space between her thumb and her index finger. Because, _maybe_ , she was talking to herself more than she was talking to Sasha.

“What I’m trying to say is that… I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’ve been through; I just know that, you need something that I can help out in - as much as you needed a ride…” She closed her eyes. “As much as you’ve provided me company, for that time in the mountain. I guess, I guess that I don’t know? Humans just help each other like that, and there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging it.”

The door creaked open. Sasha peeked out of it and saw Becky with hands against her face. 

“What do you feel like having for dinner?”

She heard Becky. She heard her alright. From behind the door, she heard the melodic misery from the alto of her voice. She felt that at that point, that there was more to Becky than she had initially thought.

Becky let out a dry chuckle, letting the quick change of subject pass but not without feeling a little shut-off. “We can check room service, do you want to eat together?”

* * *

The television ran a soap opera in the background, one of those black and white masterpieces during the period at which everything was censored and the media was rich with allusions.

“I didn’t know you were allergic to onions.”

“Amongst other things, yeah.” Sasha replied, unsure of whether or not she meant that not a lot of people knew things about her or if not a lot of people knew that she also might have been mildly allergic to dust - and when she was much younger, sweat. Other than that, she was thankful that Becky had never thought twice about her scratching and fidgeting a lot when they had been on the bike. 

When the food arrived, it came with an ice pack. Becky received it from the staff and bid him off with a warm thanks. 

“Here,” she set the tray on top of Sasha’s bed where they sat and opened the fridge to store the ice pack, “it looks swollen, so… just put some ice on it as soon as you can, okay?”

She couldn’t explain then what began to thaw in her chest, but maybe it was the sincerity in Becky’s actions that caused Sasha’s stomach to flutter just a little bit. _I wish I could tell you, just exactly why this is something I need to do for myself._

“Pasta?” Becky flashed Sasha a dimpled smile. 

“Sure.” She accepted; the pasta, and of course, the metaphorical olive branch found in the cilantro that garnished the hot meal. Becky wasn’t too bad, she thought.

They ate quietly, if not for the utensil noises and stolen glances of the other person’s bit of reaction towards what was happening on-screen. 

“I would never,” Sasha mentioned blankly.

“Never?”

“Yup. Never.” Sasha affirmed, giving the ‘yup’ an extra pop.

“Get divorced?”

“No!” Sasha lightly slapped her own knees as she sat on the mattress cross-legged. “I meant, have that many children and raise them, I don’t know, without having everything?”

Becky blinked a couple of times as she played with the hem of her own, loose, t-shirt. “Well I think that it’s perfectly fine to raise children without a mansion, a nice car, for as long as they’re eating. But that’s probably just me.”

“No no no, what I meant was…” She drew a deep breath. “ _Look_ , the mom has to divide her time between _four_ noisy children. Parents can barely make time for one kid as it is, having all the wealth they have and… yeah.” 

“ _Oh_.” Becky realized, nodding amused. “Yeah, you know, some people think that some people are raised difficult and are thrust into difficult situations and then there’s all the glory to that. And- and the truth is, it’s not really _pretty_ the way that TV tells it y’know? It’s only ever pretty when you look back… But what’s important is, what was happening _in the moment_.”

“Exactly!” Sasha lit up, the noise of the television now far away from the conversation that was happening between them. “I _hate_ how, parents are supposed to brag about their kid’s busy schedule and that’s supposed to be an accomplishment. But it’s not even about who you become, it’s about what kind of care they can give _now_.” 

“Yeah! Yeah! I can agree with that.”

Becky sat back, looking at the wall, and so did Sasha, except she looked at Becky with wild wonder.

“I think, uhh... “ Becky scratched the back of her head, replaying a distant memory. “It’s kind of funny because when I was a kid- I think, I was thirteen or maybe ten… I punched this wooden wall so hard that it broke. Think my dad was too high to notice, hah, I got away with it then.”

“Your dad was an addict?”

“I mean, who isn’t?”

She thought that a part of her stomach dropped, but the reality of it all was that Sasha just really did not know what else to say. Because, how does someone reply to that? And looking back she thought that it all had started to make sense. 

_It’s fascinating, the different kind of lives that people lead. You could look at a person and put them into boxes but everything’s just so much more than that!_

And she wasn’t going to try to understand everyone, because not everyone had something in them to understand. Not the hollow carcasses that walked in her world of glitter and money, the Stepford smiles. She swore that so many people would be fake until the day that they die. Sasha _would know_. But for that moment, she thought that she understood what Becky meant. 

Out of the billions of people in this world that existed outside the land of the elect, _most_ have complex stories.

Sasha narrowed her eyes playfully. “I think you’re onto something.”

“Don’t patronize me.” Becky tried to contain her laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes are from Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson
> 
> Would love to hear what ya'll have to say!


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